Environmental Conditions Producing Thunderstorms with Anomalous Vertical Polarity of Charge Structure Donald R. MacGorman Alexander J. Eddy NOAA/Nat’l Severe Storms Laboratory & Cooperative Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies Studies Affiliation/ Univ. of Oklahoma and NOAA/OAR Norman, Oklahoma, USA Norman, Oklahoma, USA
[email protected] Earle Williams Cameron R. Homeyer Massachusetts Insitute of Technology School of Meteorology, Univ. of Oklhaoma Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA Norman, Oklahoma, USA Abstract—+CG flashes typically comprise an unusually large Tessendorf et al. 2007, Weiss et al. 2008, Fleenor et al. 2009, fraction of CG activity in thunderstorms with anomalous vertical Emersic et al. 2011; DiGangi et al. 2016). Furthermore, charge structure. We analyzed more than a decade of NLDN previous studies have suggested that CG activity tends to be data on a 15 km x 15 km x 15 min grid spanning the contiguous delayed tens of minutes longer in these anomalous storms than United States, to identify storm cells in which +CG flashes in most storms elsewhere (MacGorman et al. 2011). constituted a large fraction of CG activity, as a proxy for thunderstorms with anomalous vertical charge structure, and For this study, we analyzed more than a decade of CG data storm cells with very low percentages of +CG lightning, as a from the National Lightning Detection Network throughout the proxy for thunderstorms with normal-polarity distributions. In contiguous United States to identify storm cells in which +CG each of seven regions, we used North American Regional flashes constituted a large fraction of CG activity, as a proxy Reanalysis data to compare the environments of anomalous for storms with anomalous vertical charge structure.